Dorumeka
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A fork in the road. Two possible strategies to develop the game.
🕑 Added 2018-06-15 08:07:35 +0000 UTC Hello! This post got a little long, but is very, very, important!The Ryona Assassins Unity project got somewhat spaghettified, and I was thinking it could really use a good restructuring. I've learned a lot while working on the game, and all of the decisions I made were the best ones I could make at the time. But my inexperience made me make some errors, that while not directly affecting the player experience, they do have an impact in the way I work on the game. To describe it in a simple way, my project is way too messy, so much that I have a difficult time making things work at moments.
The direct way this affects you is that it forces me to simplify some things about the game. To give you a precise example, I used to have a behavior where the dorus performed a melee attack when the player got too close. I have removed that in the current private development build because the way I coded that logic was pretty chaotic, so to speak, and is not playing well with the new better-made AI.
That is an example of the type of negative effects my spaghetti code is having at this point in the development of the game. Things like that are happening more often than before. The good news is that I think I'm "outgrowing" these newbie mistakes, as I keep discovering more organized ways of coding, just by trying different things out on new projects.
So, this leaves me with a choice for the path I'll lead to project on. I could start again, importing as much logic as I can from the current project, but redoing most stuff in a way that won't give me these type of problems in the future. Or I could work my way to the final game without major restructure.
The first option, to re-do the project, is like an investment. We would invest more time without more apparent progress to the development of the game. In return, we would get a project that could potentially support more features, because adding things to it wouldn't necessarily break stuff constantly that would require me diving deeply into the code of the game every time to see what's causing problems.
The second option, to just work with what we have at the moment, is the faster one. I would finish the game a lot quicker (though I can't think of an ETA). The catch is that there's the chance that I would have to take away some planned features if can't find a way to make them work without having to "entangle" my code even more. Another side effect will be the possibility of having some more notorious bugs in the final game that could be very hard to fix.
Personally, I don't know which one is the right decision. I could pick either one. What is making me feel more anxious about it is that I don't know what my audience, you, would prefer. I've been keeping you guys waiting a very long time, with my HDDs gone and all. I imagine that telling you to wait even more time would be bad news. But I also want to give you a good game!
Vote for the path you'd like the project to take. Long wait with a better result, or faster development with a more simple game?
Comments
Cool
Illuminati Games
Thank you
Dorumeka Hentai Dev
I'm very sorry :(. As hard as it is, I think it's the right call. The plan is still to release builds as I make progress, but for now I had to get a temporary job.
Crogge
I would prefer an early release instead of waiting years :(
Dorumeka Hentai Dev
Like the guy that did Fez, right? I think he redid his game 2 times and took 3 years in total. I'm definitely not planing on doing that, but... who knows... haha. Fingers crossed for my own sake.
Dorumeka Hentai Dev
That was my thinking too. Doing a RA2 and also having that morale boost of completing a project instead of feeling forever stuck. But I also think that starting the project again would feel very motivating, because I know it will be more clean and manageable. The choice is pretty close. Both options are equally good for me.
I'd say do a fresh start -- just don't make a habit of it :D
eyeteeth
another option: both? perhaps you can bring this game to completion "as is", making even more mistakes and learning from them, and when you are done you can start in on Ryona Assassins 2 with all you have learned? for myself starting a project over is both a huge relief and a real setback as i look at all the things i must re-do. reaching a stated goal (like finishing the game) is a real booster for my drive to continue, even if i had to make compromises on the way.
Victor
I vote for the restart. I've done it both ways when modeling in blender, and I've always found myself much happier with the results when I took the techniques I learned over the course of creating a project and applied them to a fresh canvas. As well as a better final product, in most cases what I had learned also allowed me to work faster and more efficiently than my first attempt. Mind you, I'm a modeler, not a programmer, so my advice may not necessarily apply to your work. Regardless, I'm very impressed with your work, and hope you continue to enjoy working on the project! And if you need any 3d models, message me and I'll see if I can be of help!
